Pleasance Courtyard
Aug 18-27 (19:40)
Cetera Desunt
The Japanese-learning, Latin-dancing universalist that is Darren Harriot & his recently grown walrus-tooth-tache, is a Brummie by birth, now firmly ensconc’d in NW London, has created a full hour show, the vibe of which was more like meeting your mate down the pub to hear his latest scrapes & adventures, rather than be entertain’d by a maestro at the peak of his powers. The whole experience was amiable, more than funny; & generally a flatlining of energy rather than those peaky funbursts of comedy shows gone by, whose only troughs are when we draw breath.
A good share of the aforemention’d scrapes came from his experiences on TV gameshows, quite a few of them, on which he says he always came last. It was such micronegativities like this which sort of stuck in the show like a tick pick’d up in some long highland grass somewhere, sending in the Limes Disease & knocking out the show. I mean, his delivery is great, & to be fair his topics were quite varied, with only the occisional nod of appreciation towards his ethnicity, such as attacking the mundanity of the BAME acronym, & reminiscing over the 2011 London riots. There was also the obvious joke about his family moving to the Black Country from Jamaica, which I’d told myself was coming about 2 or 3 minutes before he told it.
In the final reckoning, it wasn’t that Roadman was bad, but it wasn’t very good either, & perhaps that’s even worse. I mean, I love getting stuck into some of the more primitive comedy showcases at the Fringe – y’know, first timers coming up to Edinburgh with ten minutes of material – often awful, but it’s like going to watch League 2 football, or summat, you get right into it & start cheering & stuff. But with Darren, I just watch’d, & listen’d, as his well-reputed comedy vehicle drove right into thick traffic form’d by a certain lack of alchemical magic to the fashioning of his show.
Damo
Mumble Comedy 